In his second full-time season as a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief and first paired with phenom Kyle Larson, Cliff Daniels led the HendrickCars.com team to 10 wins and its first championship. Daniels first victory atop the pit box occurred at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March in only their fourth start together, and the duo posted three consecutive runner-up finishes followed by three consecutive race wins in May and June. During that streak, Daniels also spearheaded the No. 5 entry’s $1 million victory in the annual non-points NASCAR All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway.
With wins at Sonoma Raceway, Watkins Glen International and the Charlotte ROVAL, Daniels helped Larson become the first driver in series history to capture three road course victories during one season. The Daniels-led team also tied the record for most wins during a 10-race playoff with five.
The 2020 Cup Series campaign was Daniels’ first full year as crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports, as he called the shots for seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson’s final season as driver of the storied No. 48. The pair ended the year with a fifth-place finish in Johnson’s final drive in the Hendrick Motorsports entry, their fifth top-five finish and 10th top-10 of the season.
Auto racing is in Daniels’ blood. Growing up in Smithfield, Virginia, he played baseball and tinkered with stock cars in his family’s garage. It seemed inevitable that the curious kid would follow in the footsteps of his father, Charlie Daniels, a full-time late model stock car driver who competed at Langley Speedway and throughout Virginia in the 1980s and '90s. After Charlie closed the chapter on his own racing career in 1992, Cliff maintained a passion for motor sports.
Although he excelled at baseball, racing was Daniels’ true focus. He received a go-kart at age 7 and his first bandolero car at 9. As a driver, Daniels competed at South Side Speedway near Richmond, Virginia, and progressed to legends cars at Langley by 2001. He competed in late models at South Boston Speedway from 2004 until 2007, the year after he graduated high school from Hampton Roads Academy in Newport News, Virginia.
Daniels decided not to pursue professional driving, instead electing to pave a different path toward a career in racing. He set his sights on college and in the summer of 2006 moved south to enroll at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He pursued an engineering degree while working as a mechanic for a team competing in the ARCA Racing Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series.
After graduating in 2010 with a degree in mechanical engineering with a concentration in motor sports and a minor in mathematics, Daniels landed a job at RAB Racing in 2011 as the race engineer for veteran driver Kenny Wallace. He then moved to Stewart-Haas Racing, where he served as the race engineer for the No. 14 Chevrolet of champion driver Tony Stewart in 2013 and 2014. In December 2014, Daniels moved to Hendrick Motorsports to serve as the race engineer of the No. 48 Chevrolet driven by Johnson and led by legendary crew chief Chad Knaus. From 2015 to 2018, he helped power the team to 13 wins, 31 top-five finishes, 60 top-10s, two pole positions and 1,552 laps led. In the process, Johnson won his record-tying seventh Cup Series title in 2016.
Following the 2018 season, Daniels moved to a new role as an engineer in Hendrick Motorsports' competition systems group before rejoining the No. 48 team at Sonoma Raceway in June 2019 as lead engineer. He was promoted to be the crew chief for Johnson on July 29, 2019.
Daniels’ hobbies include snowboarding, cycling, running and mountain biking. He is a fan of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers and resides in Huntersville, North Carolina, with his wife Shannon, daughter Ivey and newborn son Ethan.
